Technological Singularity

Our ancestors could not possibly have seen all the amazing technology that we are surrounded by today but what about us?
Would we also be shocked if we were shown the technology of the future?

Introduction

Children today are growing up in a world that is very much different from the world their parents grew up in. It didn't used to be like that, during most of human history there haven't been much changes from one generation to another if we go a few thousand years back, not much would have changed in hundred years compared to what have changed in say last 100 years it's not only in the evolution of technology that change has happened at rapid pace but the same goes for biological evolution.

Evolution

There is roughly 3.8 billion years since the life appeared on earth but only two billion years, roughly half that time, since the first complex cells appeared. During the last fourth of the time there has been life on earth where we had organisms with more than one cell and only during the last sixth of the time we had animals. The first mammal appeared roughly 200 million years ago meaning that there has been life on Earth for nineteen times as long as there have been mammals and then we have us, humans, there's been life on Earth for roughly 19,000 times as long as we have been here. Over 200,000 old history roughly 10,000 years have taken place after the invention of farming and less than 300 years have taken place after the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Exponential Growth

Things will not going to stop progressing from here we are just getting started. I think we are underestimating the future by thinking linearly instead of exponentially. If you count to thirty you get to thirty but if you take thirty steps exponentially you end up with one billion. We are evolved to think linearly but a lot of the technological progress as taking place is exponential.

For example Moore's law states that the number of transistors that can be placed in an area doubles roughly every 18 to 24 months here's the graph that shows Moore's law since 1970s.

At first it seems like a linear progression that's because the y-axis is exponential meaning that a straight line doesn't increase with the same amount again and again but increases tenfold again and again e.g. thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand and so on.

The graph shows an increase of a million fold which is what we would expect with Moore's Law the shrinking of two-dimensional circuits made of silicon will end sooner or later. With newer technologies that can carry on the exponential improvement for a long time are underway and will be there in time.

Moore's Law is just one out of several exponential and predictable trends within information technology, Below graph shows the average price of transistors in 1968 you could get one transistor for one dollar while in 2002 one dollar could buy you almost four million transistors.

Below graph shows how many calculations per second you can buy for thousand dollars and like the other graphs it has an exponential y-axis.

Computers continue to be able to do more and more impressive things recently a computer from IBM was able to beat the best human players in jeopardy. Still computers are nowhere near as amazing as the human brain. They can't read a book and understand what it means and they don't get your jokes but will they one day?

Will computers be able to do everything we can do? at least it should be possible in theory we know that because we already have a machine that thinks like we do e.g. The human brain, that might sound like a stupid thing to point out but think about it if you want to learn how a machine can think like we do, we can learn how it can be done by looking at how the brain does it. Still we don't know much about how brain works but or knowledge about the brain is increasing and our ability to study it, is increasing exponentially.

Conclusion

It seems obvious that it's a question of time before we understand the brain and are able to imitate what the brain does with computers. If we can imitate what the brain of a normal person does we should also be able to imitate what a brain of genius does. Once we fully understand the principle and be able to make computers that are smarter than any human has ever lived, imagine thousands of digital Albert Einstein's, Sir Isaac Newton's, Thomas Edison's and Leonardo DaVinci's working together think about how much that would hasten the progression of science and technology but it doesn't stop there these computers could also keep the advantages the computers already have over humans after all computers don't have to sleep they think a lot faster than the human brain does and they don't make careless mistakes. They have perfect memory they can access all the world's knowledge through the internet and there are a lot better at thinking mathematically than we are and so on.

With these super machines we can imagine that scientific and technological progress would go a lot faster than it does today. They would be able to take science and technology to a whole new level but it doesn't stop there, these machines would also be better than us at creating intelligent machines enabling them to design machines that are even smarter than they are which again would be able to create machines that are smarter than they are and so on.

This explosion of science, technology and intelligence has been referred by many as the 'Singularity'. Futurist Kurzweil has theorized extensively about this and written a book called the 'singularity is near'. He estimates that the singularity will take place somewhere around year 2045.

Considering the amazing feats we already have achieved with the very limited intelligence, we have today. We should have great expectation for what can be done with such future advancements at our disposal, just about anything that's theoretically possible for us to do will also be practically possible.

| Images from Pixabay